9 ms·

The Percentage of American Adults Not Having Sex Has Reached a Record High

57 points by buboard 8y ago

0db532a0 8y ago
The articles misses one important factor: Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, OKCupid et al. have changed the market in such a way that in a large city, even the homeliest of girls can log on and within hours arrange sex with a guy who she would otherwise have no prospects of a long-term relationship with, but is well above the attractiveness level she would have previously had access to. I haven’t just read this online; I have seen this with my own eyes, with multiple female acquaintances, none of them exactly venuses, showing me the guys they’ve been meeting up with. The fact stands that guys are a lot less choosy than girls, and this necessarily includes the guys who are also more physically attractive than most. As online dating has become the norm, this causes a drought for a larger portion of men than before.
- carlmr 8y ago
  >As online dating has become the norm, this causes a drought for a larger portion of men than before. From my own experience, it's impossible for me to find a date on Tinder. No matter how much time I spend on profile pictures or crafting bios. On the other hand in face to face interaction it's not a problem. From my experience women are more choosy online when they only have data (height, salary, picture). For in person interaction talking, physical interaction (e.g. dancing), energy, smile etc. have more weight.
  - 0db532a0 8y ago
    Tinder became impossible for me too. Take a look into Hinge. The demographic is a lot more focussed and fewer people use it. If you at least ostensibly fit the demographic, then you'll have a big chance. Sadly I had a different problem on Hinge. Lots of dates with physically very attractive girls, but nothing to talk about. That is not necessarily a problem, but it does make things difficult, at least given how I work. Obviously well educated, well connected, stable, attractive and interesting girls (and actually guys) have no need for online dating anyway. I was left quite confused as to why they were meeting up with me, and I was quite open about my educational background and interests on my profile. It's also not the case that I have a terribly out of this world salary that I could imply or was implying in my profile. A few years ago I was getting consistent success through Tinder. It was pretty much my main source. Growing up, your age puts you into a different set of priorities which you are measured by. I did notice a lot of questions recently about my living situation. Personally I prefer to pay less, live with others and save up. I've always preferred independence. However I might now be entering the demographic where it's expected that I pay for a place on my own. I have been pressed multiple times in the past to move into somewhere on my own by girls who would not be able to afford the same for themselves. The fact stands that Tinder and Hinge give girls easy short-term access to the guy who doesn't even need to save up. Forget earnings, Adonis is a swipe away too. It's either a blessing or a curse depending on where you stand. However much song and dance either side likes to make over dating, both sides know the deal, and you're not meeting up just to chew the fat. I've decided to cut my losses and focus on other things for now.
    - u201904 8y ago
      > I did notice a lot of questions recently about my living situation. Don't sweat it. We are not all Zuckerbergs. You don't have to get your own place in anticipation of finding someone. As you mentioned, its the woman without a place that is very concern. Even though, I live on my own & have my own car. While dating, I initially say that I live with my parents & don't have a ride. More than 10 matches, unmatched me. I am not a chauffeur or bed & b'fast place.
      - randyrand 8y ago
        I do the same. I also usually tell girls I'm fat and generally try and make the conversation bad as well. /s I'm not sure why you would think a car and place are unreasonable ways to judge how attractive someone is.
- 86carr 8y ago
  I agree! As a man, you're in for a really hard dating life (and life in general as a result) if you're relying on these apps. Meeting women in person, an increasingly rare opportunity, is far more likely to result in a positive outcome. At some level I hold the apps them selves responsible. I think they create some kind of negative loop in the dating world. I don't believe the results of these apps are a net positive for society but my perception is colored.
  - 0db532a0 8y ago
    It's not a negative loop at all. This is now how the market works. The task is to be aware of how it works and to use it to your advantage as far as you can.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      I mean yeah, you can exploit it to your benefit by going full pickup artist with your profile(s) but that's a) a lot of work if you're just trying to get normal dates and b) generally frowned upon in polite society.
      - 0db532a0 8y ago
        This isn't about whether you go full peacock fedora pickup artist. The thing I would like to emphasise is that each side knows the deal. Women are provably better at festooning the deal in the presence of other men, but the deal remains. This includes "normal" dates. I can't know what sort of girls you are generally around, but I was with a group of girls the other night, who were comparing their recent Tinder matches and fucks with each other. They were not talking any differently about the guys they'd met to how men are generally portrayed to talk about women, including size appraisals of varied body parts. On the polite society comment, each gender is just as calculating as the other. From my experience, this fact does not change particularly based on education level, though the festooning around it might well. A girl who really has no prospects of a quick fuck might indeed be more inclined to settle for what you would be implying with a normal date. The same goes for for guys in a similar bracket as well.
      - 8y ago
- identity-haver 8y ago
  Whoever's left after several generations of this consumer technology will look at apps like this and the associated lifestyle the way humans look at snakes, open sores, and other dangerous, reproductive-fitness harming things today. This may be counterintuitive, but since birth control there is an inverse relationship between the number of sexual partners and the number of children.
kerng 8y ago
I think the article could go into more depth and analyze this much further. One aspect that is entirely missing is how dating changed over the last decade. The rise of dating apps for instance would be interesting to put into the mix when discussing this.
thrax 8y ago
Yawn. Everybody is beating it to internet porn. It's probably the main reason that being seated for long periods isn't killing more people.
Blackstone4 8y ago
Technology could be creating a 'winner-take-phenomenon' in dating by massively expanding the options people have. The top X percentage of guys get all the women. There's also the social argument, since marriage is less common, sought after males are no longer locked down the way they once were.
- arandr0x 8y ago
  What I don't understand with this argument, is sex is usually a 1:1 activity that takes up a bit of time (like interviewing). Even if you have a population H (for Hottie) of men every woman would wave her panties for (doubtful but let's assume) the men in H can't possibly have sex with every woman every day. Meaning some of the women, even if they can have sex with the men in H, and it probably does affect how they view men in not-H (less well due to inferior H factor), must be spending enough time sexually frustrated to be available for not-H. Indeed, if you look at sex not as a matching problem between males and females, but as an event distribution, then let's say "desirable men" want sex at a rate of K events per week and all women want sex at a rate of J events per week. Let's say the population has 10 desirable men, 90 undesirable men, and 100 women. In the past where the desirable men were married off, they had sex avg(K,J) times per week, for a total of 10xavg(K,J) events involving a desirable man, leaving 90xavg(K,J) events involving an undesirable man. Let's say now all those people move in the new, "casual" world. The desirable men can have sex to their heart's content: K times per week. The undesirables must use the remaining times that a woman in the population would like to have sex but the desirables are satiated: 100xJ-10xK. Now, if 100xJ - 10xK > 90xK, so if men and women want sex roughly as many times, or if women want more, undesirable men are not really negatively affected. Indeed they have more variety under the new system. However if J = 0.5xK, then roughly half the undesirables are unsatisfied, or they're all unsatisfied half the time, which does feel like a step down. Anecdotally I don't think it's the case that 50% of less desirable dudes are just not having sex, but let's say it's 10, or 20%, that's believable. It would mean women want sex slightly less than men -- 10 or 20% less. Note that the 10 or 20% not having sex aren't necessarily less desirable than the other undesirables, just less lucky. Clearly a solution for the leftover guys is obvious: They must increase all women's libido past the points where the hotties can satiate it. (Obvious caveats: silly analysis, doesn't model gay people, assume libido is constant or normally distributed across populations, assume partners for every event are independent, etc)
u201904 8y ago
Another great issue that is overlooked is the #metoo era we live in, where men are just disgusting pigs and its our uncultured savage nature that is the issue. We are blamed for looking at a woman's ass when she chooses to wear a very tight dress showing all her curves in the name of freedom & female liberation. That is just a reflex action. One cannot be blamed for laughing when they see or hear something funny. In the same way, as a heterosexual guy, I look at what attracts me. The main issue that, a woman has just claim without any proof and the guy is just ruined. That is the reason why myself and couple of friends (single) have backed away from dating apps. But now we are quite anxious to date anyone we work with or lives near us.
- duado 8y ago
  You gotta learn the poker face. I can be in a technical meeting with a woman and be playing a graphic sex fantasy with her on a background thread.
  - dang 8y ago
    Please don't do this here.
    - duado 8y ago
      Do what, exactly? Make a normative recommendation like “you gotta?”
      - dang 8y ago
        The "you gotta" was the only part of your comment that wasn't a problem! For starters, please don't go on about your "graphic sex fantasy" here. No doubt it gratifies something, but not intellectual curiosity: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  While I agree, I don't think this is particularly new. I've been married 20 years now, so the last time I approached a girl was in the 1900's - and I still recall the look of utter disgust and contempt that I would get from at least 80% of the women I tried to approach (mind you, I'm talking about going out to bars and clubs where there's sort of an expectation of meeting or at least talking to strangers). I was hardly alone, either. Being rejected - cruelly and viciously - is part and parcel of the male dating experience; I just think that young men have gotten tired of it.
amanaplanacanal 8y ago
The data presentation in that article is probably a little misleading. It's not entirely clear that young men are having less sex than young women. Somebody has created another graph showing the confidence intervals, and there is a large overlap: https://twitter.com/graykimbrough/status/1111695055541161992/photo/1 https://twitter.com/graykimbrough/status/1111695055541161992...

57 points by buboard 8y ago

The articles misses one important factor: Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, OKCupid et al. have changed the market in such a way that in a large city, even the homeliest of girls can log on and within hours arrange sex with a guy who she would otherwise have no prospects of a long-term relationship with, but is well above the attractiveness level she would have previously had access to. I haven’t just read this online; I have seen this with my own eyes, with multiple female acquaintances, none of them exactly venuses, showing me the guys they’ve been meeting up with. The fact stands that guys are a lot less choosy than girls, and this necessarily includes the guys who are also more physically attractive than most. As online dating has become the norm, this causes a drought for a larger portion of men than before.

carlmr 8y ago
>As online dating has become the norm, this causes a drought for a larger portion of men than before. From my own experience, it's impossible for me to find a date on Tinder. No matter how much time I spend on profile pictures or crafting bios. On the other hand in face to face interaction it's not a problem. From my experience women are more choosy online when they only have data (height, salary, picture). For in person interaction talking, physical interaction (e.g. dancing), energy, smile etc. have more weight.
- 0db532a0 8y ago
  Tinder became impossible for me too. Take a look into Hinge. The demographic is a lot more focussed and fewer people use it. If you at least ostensibly fit the demographic, then you'll have a big chance. Sadly I had a different problem on Hinge. Lots of dates with physically very attractive girls, but nothing to talk about. That is not necessarily a problem, but it does make things difficult, at least given how I work. Obviously well educated, well connected, stable, attractive and interesting girls (and actually guys) have no need for online dating anyway. I was left quite confused as to why they were meeting up with me, and I was quite open about my educational background and interests on my profile. It's also not the case that I have a terribly out of this world salary that I could imply or was implying in my profile. A few years ago I was getting consistent success through Tinder. It was pretty much my main source. Growing up, your age puts you into a different set of priorities which you are measured by. I did notice a lot of questions recently about my living situation. Personally I prefer to pay less, live with others and save up. I've always preferred independence. However I might now be entering the demographic where it's expected that I pay for a place on my own. I have been pressed multiple times in the past to move into somewhere on my own by girls who would not be able to afford the same for themselves. The fact stands that Tinder and Hinge give girls easy short-term access to the guy who doesn't even need to save up. Forget earnings, Adonis is a swipe away too. It's either a blessing or a curse depending on where you stand. However much song and dance either side likes to make over dating, both sides know the deal, and you're not meeting up just to chew the fat. I've decided to cut my losses and focus on other things for now.
  - u201904 8y ago
    > I did notice a lot of questions recently about my living situation. Don't sweat it. We are not all Zuckerbergs. You don't have to get your own place in anticipation of finding someone. As you mentioned, its the woman without a place that is very concern. Even though, I live on my own & have my own car. While dating, I initially say that I live with my parents & don't have a ride. More than 10 matches, unmatched me. I am not a chauffeur or bed & b'fast place.
    - randyrand 8y ago
      I do the same. I also usually tell girls I'm fat and generally try and make the conversation bad as well. /s I'm not sure why you would think a car and place are unreasonable ways to judge how attractive someone is.
86carr 8y ago
I agree! As a man, you're in for a really hard dating life (and life in general as a result) if you're relying on these apps. Meeting women in person, an increasingly rare opportunity, is far more likely to result in a positive outcome. At some level I hold the apps them selves responsible. I think they create some kind of negative loop in the dating world. I don't believe the results of these apps are a net positive for society but my perception is colored.
- 0db532a0 8y ago
  It's not a negative loop at all. This is now how the market works. The task is to be aware of how it works and to use it to your advantage as far as you can.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    I mean yeah, you can exploit it to your benefit by going full pickup artist with your profile(s) but that's a) a lot of work if you're just trying to get normal dates and b) generally frowned upon in polite society.
    - 0db532a0 8y ago
      This isn't about whether you go full peacock fedora pickup artist. The thing I would like to emphasise is that each side knows the deal. Women are provably better at festooning the deal in the presence of other men, but the deal remains. This includes "normal" dates. I can't know what sort of girls you are generally around, but I was with a group of girls the other night, who were comparing their recent Tinder matches and fucks with each other. They were not talking any differently about the guys they'd met to how men are generally portrayed to talk about women, including size appraisals of varied body parts. On the polite society comment, each gender is just as calculating as the other. From my experience, this fact does not change particularly based on education level, though the festooning around it might well. A girl who really has no prospects of a quick fuck might indeed be more inclined to settle for what you would be implying with a normal date. The same goes for for guys in a similar bracket as well.
    - 8y ago
identity-haver 8y ago
Whoever's left after several generations of this consumer technology will look at apps like this and the associated lifestyle the way humans look at snakes, open sores, and other dangerous, reproductive-fitness harming things today. This may be counterintuitive, but since birth control there is an inverse relationship between the number of sexual partners and the number of children.

kerng 8y ago

I think the article could go into more depth and analyze this much further. One aspect that is entirely missing is how dating changed over the last decade. The rise of dating apps for instance would be interesting to put into the mix when discussing this.

thrax 8y ago

Yawn. Everybody is beating it to internet porn. It's probably the main reason that being seated for long periods isn't killing more people.

Blackstone4 8y ago

Technology could be creating a 'winner-take-phenomenon' in dating by massively expanding the options people have. The top X percentage of guys get all the women. There's also the social argument, since marriage is less common, sought after males are no longer locked down the way they once were.

arandr0x 8y ago
What I don't understand with this argument, is sex is usually a 1:1 activity that takes up a bit of time (like interviewing). Even if you have a population H (for Hottie) of men every woman would wave her panties for (doubtful but let's assume) the men in H can't possibly have sex with every woman every day. Meaning some of the women, even if they can have sex with the men in H, and it probably does affect how they view men in not-H (less well due to inferior H factor), must be spending enough time sexually frustrated to be available for not-H. Indeed, if you look at sex not as a matching problem between males and females, but as an event distribution, then let's say "desirable men" want sex at a rate of K events per week and all women want sex at a rate of J events per week. Let's say the population has 10 desirable men, 90 undesirable men, and 100 women. In the past where the desirable men were married off, they had sex avg(K,J) times per week, for a total of 10xavg(K,J) events involving a desirable man, leaving 90xavg(K,J) events involving an undesirable man. Let's say now all those people move in the new, "casual" world. The desirable men can have sex to their heart's content: K times per week. The undesirables must use the remaining times that a woman in the population would like to have sex but the desirables are satiated: 100xJ-10xK. Now, if 100xJ - 10xK > 90xK, so if men and women want sex roughly as many times, or if women want more, undesirable men are not really negatively affected. Indeed they have more variety under the new system. However if J = 0.5xK, then roughly half the undesirables are unsatisfied, or they're all unsatisfied half the time, which does feel like a step down. Anecdotally I don't think it's the case that 50% of less desirable dudes are just not having sex, but let's say it's 10, or 20%, that's believable. It would mean women want sex slightly less than men -- 10 or 20% less. Note that the 10 or 20% not having sex aren't necessarily less desirable than the other undesirables, just less lucky. Clearly a solution for the leftover guys is obvious: They must increase all women's libido past the points where the hotties can satiate it. (Obvious caveats: silly analysis, doesn't model gay people, assume libido is constant or normally distributed across populations, assume partners for every event are independent, etc)

u201904 8y ago

Another great issue that is overlooked is the #metoo era we live in, where men are just disgusting pigs and its our uncultured savage nature that is the issue. We are blamed for looking at a woman's ass when she chooses to wear a very tight dress showing all her curves in the name of freedom & female liberation. That is just a reflex action. One cannot be blamed for laughing when they see or hear something funny. In the same way, as a heterosexual guy, I look at what attracts me. The main issue that, a woman has just claim without any proof and the guy is just ruined. That is the reason why myself and couple of friends (single) have backed away from dating apps. But now we are quite anxious to date anyone we work with or lives near us.

duado 8y ago
You gotta learn the poker face. I can be in a technical meeting with a woman and be playing a graphic sex fantasy with her on a background thread.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't do this here.
  - duado 8y ago
    Do what, exactly? Make a normative recommendation like “you gotta?”
    - dang 8y ago
      The "you gotta" was the only part of your comment that wasn't a problem! For starters, please don't go on about your "graphic sex fantasy" here. No doubt it gratifies something, but not intellectual curiosity: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
commandlinefan 8y ago
While I agree, I don't think this is particularly new. I've been married 20 years now, so the last time I approached a girl was in the 1900's - and I still recall the look of utter disgust and contempt that I would get from at least 80% of the women I tried to approach (mind you, I'm talking about going out to bars and clubs where there's sort of an expectation of meeting or at least talking to strangers). I was hardly alone, either. Being rejected - cruelly and viciously - is part and parcel of the male dating experience; I just think that young men have gotten tired of it.

amanaplanacanal 8y ago

The data presentation in that article is probably a little misleading. It's not entirely clear that young men are having less sex than young women. Somebody has created another graph showing the confidence intervals, and there is a large overlap: https://twitter.com/graykimbrough/status/1111695055541161992/photo/1 https://twitter.com/graykimbrough/status/1111695055541161992...